ENGLAND’S Barclays Bank has laid off around 450 employees in India, or close to a tenth of its workforce in the country, in the fourth and biggest retrenchment since December 2008, a person privy to the development said. The latest job cut drive was kicked off three days ago and is much larger than the previous round where 150 employees were laid off in December 2009. Barclays had also pruned workforce in June 2009 and December 2008. “We may have had to take some tough decisions in the last few months to ensure that we have the right focus. But we are of the view that they were the right ones,” Barclays India spokesman said. The number of job losses in this round is less than 450, but more than 150, the number of people laid off last December, he said. “Most of the job losses involve midsenior level executives,” a Delhi-based employee, who was also asked to quit, told ET. Some of those who received pink slips are departmental heads, including those looking after divisions such as credit card operations, collection heads and contact centres. Jobs in the bank’s non-banking finance arm, Barclays Finance, as well as in the global retail and commercial banking operations have been impacted. The global retail and banking operations was renamed as Barclays Corporate early this year. The bank has paid severance packages of about three-months’ salary to each of these employees. After the current job cut, Barclays will have 5,000 employees across its five business units in India — retail & corporate banking; investment banking; wealth management, Barclays Shared Services, which handles the bank’s back office operations and Barclays Technology Centre, which provides technological solutions. Barclays has also reduced the number of branches of its finance arm (which is part of Barclays Corporate) after cutting it down by a third from its peak to 79 offices as of December 2009. “There is further rationalisation, but we cannot give out the numbers as yet,” the spokesman said. The spokesman said this one could be the last of the retrenchment exercises in India and he did not see any further job cuts at Barclays in the foreseeable future. “Looking at their bi-annual retrenchment drive, there could be another round coming up in the next few months,” said another Delhi-based employee, who did not wish to be quoted. Meanwhile, the bank is looking to hire people in specialised functions such as premier banking relationship management. The jobs realignment should be viewed in the context of Barclays’ sharpened focus on corporate and investment banking, besides wealth management businesses in India, the spokesman said. [email protected]
-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""GLOBAL SPECULATORS"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalspeculators?hl=en.
